Dr Gillian Schofield, co-director of the Centre for Research on the Child and Family at the University of East Anglia, told a Fostering Network conference in Belfast last week that long-term foster families can be "real families for children".
Although at any one time a third of looked-after children are in long-term placements, they were often stigmatised and low priority, she said.
More resources to support children, carers and foster families were needed.
Schofield challenged critics who doubted whether children in long-term foster care could feel part of a family, saying it was important to think about what belonging means. This was not necessarily to do with a legal order but to do with relations and families who "open their doors to children who don't belong to them by birth or law", she said.
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